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Boxing and Fair Play? Who cares about it!

Recent world championship boxing events between Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. vs Victor “Vicious” Ortiz and Andre “The Beast” Berto vs Dejan “Mr Sympaticus” Zavec (Jan Zaveck) showed lack of basic sport element – fair play. The unsportsmanlike conduct is the worst possible “promotion” of sport in general and boxing, noble martial art to be, as such.
Millions of people, boxing fans, media etc. were hardly waiting for the fight of the year between unbeaten Floyd Mayweather Jr. and young talent, world WBC champion Victor Ortiz. The broadcaster HBO – pay-per-view provider – was making big show months before the fight with 24/7 coverage’s etc. It was supposed to be one the best fights in the last years: veteran Mayweather, excellent athlete and technically perfect fighter, versus young power Ortiz.

Tremendously big night was expected on September 17 by the crowd in MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas and many HBO pay-per-view subscribers. The epilogue? End of the fight in 4th round with extremely controversialMayweather’s KO (see video and following tweets-reactions below).

[View the story “Floyd Mayweather’s KO” on Storify]OK, Ortiz wasn’t saint at all, but at least he apologized to the “Money” for his head butt, who used the opportunity (apology) to knock him out. While Ortiz, of course, didn’t feel any comfortable with Mayweather’s reaction and way of KO, Floyd was arrogantly defending himself he was playing (fighting) by the rules. It’s true, he actually didn’t break any rule (indeed, basic boxing rule is “Protect yourself at all times”) … expect the unwritten rule of fair play; probably (and hopefully) one of the basic sport rules, which should be respected by every single sportsman. No doubt, Floyd is a great champion and fighter, but his unsportsmanlike reaction is really bad for himself and for boxing – noble martial art.

[View the story “Mayweather and Ortiz: post-fight” on Storify]To go even further, just couple of weeks before Andre Berto won against Slovene hero Dejan Zavec (aka Jan Zaveck). The championship fight for the IBF welterweight world title was also marked by Berto’s head butt (video below) which wasn’t seen by the officials. After the match Berto said there was no head punch at all. Well, I don’t blame him for the punch which, probably, wasn’t intentional, I just blame him not to admit it.

And what’s the worst thing of it: they get millions of dollars for their unsportsmanlike actions. Not to mention they are or, at least, should be, role models for many youngsters. So sad…